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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Fighting Hunger in CO Starts by Talking About It

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Monday, September 8, 2014   

ARVADA, Colo. - The topic today at the fourth annual "Hunger Free Colorado Summit" in Arvada will be fighting poverty.

About 200 community leaders and advocates at this year's summit are discussing ways they can collaborate to improve access to healthy food for more Coloradans - and they will have more in common than their passion for the topic. Some have faced hunger themselves and have experience with the programs and services they'll be talking about.

Kathy Underhill, executive director of Hunger Free Colorado, says they want to help bust the stigmas about poverty that keep some people silent and others unaware of the problem.

"There's really no place in the public discourse for talking about the fact that you are struggling," Underhill says. "That's kind of a self-perpetuating cycle that doesn't allow for a discussion about the systemic factors at play that create those situations."

Underhill credits collaboration for progress the state has made since Hunger Free Colorado was formed in 2009. Just this year, new state laws are allowing some schools to serve breakfast in classrooms, and giving farmers state tax credits for donating produce to food banks.

New U.S. Department of Agriculture figures indicate almost 14 percent of Coloradans struggle to afford diets that contain a good variety of healthy foods. Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, says it's a stark contrast to what is otherwise considered a prosperous state.

"Colorado is rich when you average out everybody's income, but if inequality is growing, that doesn't mean everybody can make a go of it," Weill says. "To the bottom third of the population, wages have been going down, earnings have been going down, for two or three decades now."

Weill is one of the speakers at today's event. The line-up also includes Sister Simone Campbell, organizer of the national social advocacy group "Nuns on the Bus."


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